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136 DAYS IN THE SUN
softening the discomforts of existence, for themselves
as well as for others, by means of their frugality and
their humanity.
But there are visitations from which none can
escape: disease and death! The Andalusian cannot
bear the thought of death. I suppose we cannot bear
it either, but death does not impress us as a great piece
of the madness of life. Our whole existence has been
too far tinged by death to make this possible. From
early childhood we are on speaking terms with death,
accepting it as a natural final link in the chain of all
our other unpleasant experiences. Whatever we can-
not fully dispose of in this way is taken care,of by our
religion. But death strikes the Andalusian as an ob-
struction in his path, an overwhelming contrast to life.
The two cannot be reconciled in his mind, and he shuts
his eyes to everything that might remind him of the
existence of death. But if death penetrates his life in
any way, he is not capable of accepting it as an ab-
stract conception. His abhorrence takes the form of a
certain coldness toward whoever brought death into
his world, toward the dear deceased.
The northerner is unpleasantly impressed by the in-
difference with which the Andalusian treats the earthly
remains of his relatives. In former days, corpses were
always taken out of the city at night. Now, in the
gully behind the Alhambra you may meet the corpse-
bearers every day, six ragged drunken creatures who
bear the dead of Granada out to the cemeteries in the
hills. Four of them carry the coffin, a plain white box,
rough and unpainted, made of thin pine wood, with
spaces an inch wide between the planks, for the pur-
pose of economizing lumber in the construction of the
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